How One Monk Crushed Catholicism in 24 Hours

REFORMATION DAY - 10.31.2025 - Chris Pinto

 

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Today's Show: REFORMATION DAY - 10.31.2025

Chris discusses the annual remembrance of the Protestant Reformation, in particular the day on which Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517. The Reformation that would eventually follow would change Western Europe, and the rest of the world, forever. In light of principles of freedom that were won by the Reformers, it is disturbing to see the rise of Christian persecution. As such, we also discuss the persecution of two modern Lutherans, Dr. Paivi Rasanen and the Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola, who have been prosecuted in the courts of Finland, because of their Christian beliefs. We also discuss the recently published song of the Reformation martyrs by a long time supporter of our ministry. The song is called "Eyes to See" and was generated by a brother, using AI tools. The result is an amazing and powerful work of music, that must be heard to be believed.

Wycliffe, Luther and Today - Conrad Vine

Society's Moment of Truth: Conscience or Coercion

Rekindling The Protestant Reformation - Wittenberg 31st October 2017

Unity for the good of the country. The celebration of the 500 anniversary of the reformation in the Pashkov House»

(Translated from an article in Russian)

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Unity for the good of the country. The celebration of the 500 anniversary of the reformation in the Pashkov House»

November 1, 2017, 15:21

Religion

October 31, 2017, in Moscow in cultural and exhibition complex «Pashkov House hosted the main event devoted to the celebration of the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation. At a ceremony attended by representatives of public authorities, diplomats, public figures, heads of the Protestant churches of Russia and the clergy of the Christian denominations.

Welcoming guests to the ceremony, Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia Dietrich Brower recalled that exactly 500 years ago there was an event that marked the beginning of the Reformation: the Augustinian monk Martin Luther published the 95 theses, in which criticized the abuses of the Church. He did not want to create a separate denomination, but has sought to reform the Church. "Yes, the Reformation led to the formation of later new denominations, but it taught us peer inside yourself and accept differences, admit mistakes and come to terms in the name of Christ," said the Archbishop. According to him, the Reformation "carried out a coup in the minds of men", and primarily taught to perceive God "not as distant and incomprehensible despot, but through the good news of Jesus Christ." In addition, one of the cornerstones of the theology of the Reformation was the idea of the "height of Christian freedom, which equates to a deep responsibility."

Only a Jesuit could do such a thing

October 31,  2017, is the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of All Saints church, and other churches in Wittenberg, Germany on this date in 1517, as a protest of the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences. This is considered as the start of the Protestant Reformation, and is commemorated as Reformation Day. In 2016, on Reformation Day, Francis I, the Bishop of Rome, met with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation in Lund, Sweden to commemorate 2017 to eliminate division and fragmentation among their respective churches.  Well, the 500th Anniversary is here, and the divisions seem to have been overcome since the pledge for unification was made in 2016. The Roman Catholic church celebrated an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy from December 8, 2015, through November 20, 2016, as declared by the papal Bull, Misericordiae Vultus. Note that the Pontiff of Rome met with the Lutheran World Federation in Sweden on October 31, 2016, almost 3 weeks before the end of the Roman Catholic Jubilee of Mercy (Year).   The Merriam-Webster Definition of Jesuit 1 :a member of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1534 and devoted to missionary and educational work 2 :one given to intrigue or equivocation Martin Luther's 95 Theses were primarily an objection and a refutation of the Roman Catholic practice of forgiving 'sins' for money. During the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy of the Catholic Church, sins were forgiven as an act of compassion by priests around the world. What is so ironic about the Roman Pontiff celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, is that Martin Luther, the Reformer was opposed to the practice of selling of indulgences.   Though the Holy See may not have sold Indulgences during the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy;  they offered Indulgences as an act of charity.  Either way, they were pardoning sins, which only God can do.  So, the Roman Pontiff has taken part in something that I believe Martin Luther would not have approved.  In fact, Luther was a Protestant, and believed in Sola Scriptura, and not the dogmas of the Roman Catholic church, which he had left following his conversion. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Bishop of Rome, or as he named himself Francis I, is a Jesuit after all.  And only a Jesuit would participate in an Event commemorating a Protest against the church he himself represents as its figurehead, no less.  You see, duality is one of a Jesuit's favorite techniques.     Arsenio 10/31/2017 Reformation Day References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/catholics-lutherans-look-toward-christian-unity-in-reformation-statement-83657 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Jesuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Jubilee_of_Mercy

Die Hochzeit des Tieres - Wer ist die Braut und wer sind die Hochzeiten? (The Wedding of the Beast - Who is the Bride and who are the guests?)

The Wedding of the Beast - Who is the Bride and who are the guests?

Nunta Fiarei - cine este Mireasa și cine sunt Nuntașii

John Wycliffe


Published on Nov 11, 2017

"Apoi a urmat un alt inger, al treilea, si a zis cu glas tare: "Daca se inchina cineva fiarei si icoanei ei si primeste semnul ei pe frunte sau pe mana, 10. va bea si el din vinul maniei lui Dumnezeu, turnat neamestecat in paharul maniei Lui; si va fi chinuit in foc si in pucioasa, inaintea sfintilor ingeri si inaintea Mielului. Apoc 14 9."

Quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation

Larissa Tenorio Gessner

October 31, 2017

Do you know the significance of the Protestant Reformation and why it is so widely commemorated?

This year, 2017, we as a church have been commemorating the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation, the beginning of which many consider as October 31, 1517, with Martin Luther's 95 theses. Many of our churches worldwide have held conferences and special meetings in celebration (including a few listed below). The subject of this quarter's Sabbath School Lesson is Justification by Faith to further study and better understand a driving topic of the Reformation. This year's Week of Prayer theme will also be the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Do you know the significance of the Protestant Reformation and why it is so widely commemorated? Prior to the Reformation, the Bible was unavailable to all except a very selected few. The conditions in the world were so that, the masses were illiterate, the Bible was only available in languages they did not speak, and the few copies and translations of the Bible were locked away and hidden. Martin Luther himself spent years as a student of theology in ingorance of the Bible's existence.

"Rome withheld the Bible from the people, and required all men to accept her teachings in its place. It was the work of the Reformation to restore to men the Word of God;" (The Great Controversy, p. 388).

Today we commemorate 500 years since God's Word began to be rediscovered. How fitting, then, that our celebration include an earnest study of His word, time and devotion dedicated to His precious gospel, and dedication in working out the prophecies included in His letter to us.

Pope Francis Reaches Out To Honor The Man Who Splintered Christianity

Audio will be available later today.

October 28, 20164:29 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

SYLVIA POGGIOLI

Pope Francis speaks to Lutheran pilgrims at the Vatican on Oct. 13. The pope is traveling to Lund, Sweden — where the Lutheran World Federation was founded 70 years ago — on Monday to take part in the year-long commemoration of the Protestant Reformation, launched by Martin Luther in 1517.AP



One of the greatest rifts in Christianity — between Catholics and Lutherans — isn't what it used to be. As a sign of those much improved relations, Pope Francis is traveling Monday to Sweden, an overwhelmingly Lutheran country, to kick off a year-long commemoration of the Protestant Reformation that split the churches 500 years ago.

It was the year 1517 when the German monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of his Catholic church, denouncing the Catholic sale of indulgences — pardons for sins — and questioning papal authority. That led to his excommunication and the start of the Protestant Reformation.

The Catholic Church reacted with the Counter Reformation, and mutual enmity led to decades of religious wars that devastated central Europe.

Gerard O'Connell, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit magazine America, says the pope's participation in commemorating the Reformation is proof of the extraordinary change in Catholic-Lutheran relations.

"A recognition, perhaps, that both sides missed something at the time of the Protestant Reformation," says O'Connell. "The Catholic Church missed ways of reforming itself. Luther and those around him pressed in a way that just couldn't be taken on board, so, in a way, both sides misspoke."

The pope's trip is in keeping with his efforts to reach out to other branches of Christianity — like the Russian Orthodox Church — and other faiths, including Islam and Judaism.

A reconciliation

The animosity and resentments left by the Reformation only began to heal after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, with the start of an ecumenical dialogue aimed at promoting Christian unity.

There are still some doctrinal disputes. But Pope Francis says that while theologians iron out their differences, the two churches can work together on social issues like caring for the poor, migrants and refugees, and combating persecution of Christians.

Jens-Martin Kruse, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Rome, says Francis' approach has been dubbed "walking ecumenism."

"We are moving together, this is a new experience that we are together on this walk," Kruse adds. "Walking together, we find that we have lots of things more in [common than] we thought before."

That raises the question of whether the Reformation might have been a complete misunderstanding.

"Maybe not a misunderstanding," says Kruse, "but today, we are at the point where a lot of these topics from Luther are common for Catholics and Lutherans."

Praising Martin Luther

Last June, Pope Francis went so far as to praise Luther — once deemed a heretic by the Catholic Church — as a great reformer.

On his flight back to Rome from Armenia, the pope told reporters, "The church was not a role model, there was corruption, there was worldliness, there was greed, and lust for power. He protested against this. And he was an intelligent man."

There are three remaining areas of division: the question of the Universal Church and papal primacy; the priesthood, which includes women in the Lutheran church; and the nature of the Eucharist or Holy Communion.

This last item is of great concern to both churches, as they try to deal with Catholics and Lutherans who are married and who want to receive communion together.

A year ago, visiting the Lutheran church in Rome, Pope Francis opened the door slightly. He suggested to a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man that perhaps, if her conscience permitted, she could receive communion in her husband's church.

Briefing reporters at the Vatican, Rev. Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, said the question of sharing the Eucharistic table — or interfaith communion — is of prime importance.

"I really hope the joint commemoration gives us a strong encouragement to be faster, to be bolder and to be more creative," said Junge, "and with a very strong focus on where people feel lack of unity the heaviest, around the table."

Source

A leap across the great divide

by Mgr Mark Langham

posted Thursday, 27 Oct 2016

Pope Francis prays during a visit to the Lutheran church in Rome last November (AP)




Thanks to astonishing ecumenical advances, Catholics can recognise – and even give thanks for – the witness of Martin Luther

In October 2012, the Catholic bishops of Germany received an invitation that left them stumped. German Protestants had asked them to join in the jubilee celebrations of the Reformation in 2017, specifically in the events leading up to the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting of 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenburg, the act considered to have launched the Reformation.

Not surprisingly, the bishops were cautious. “It depends on the character of the events planned,” said their spokesman, Bishop Gerhard Feige. “Catholic Christians consider the division of the Western Church as a tragedy – and do not think they can celebrate this merrily.”

Clearly, a great deal of discussion about the character of those events has taken place in the meantime. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the president of the German bishops’ conference, and Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chairman of the German Protestant churches, have marked the anniversary by leading an ecumenical pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and will hold a Lent service dedicated to healing memories. Moreover, Pope Francis is travelling to Sweden to take part in a service marking the beginning of preparations for the jubilee.

For many Catholics, the anniversary of the Reformation will be a matter of great sorrow. It is hard to see how any Catholic could celebrate an event which ruptured Western Christendom and rejected many teachings of the Church, and indeed this magazine has termed any prospect of a joint celebration a “naïve initiative”.

Yet this anniversary takes place in a new era in relations between Catholics and Lutherans, an ecumenical engagement inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council which allows each side to see the Reformation in a way that does not deny, but rather transcends, old polemics. This new encounter culminated in the 1999 “Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”, officially received by both the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, which expressed a common understanding of one of the hotly contested causes of the Reformation.

Certainly, the involvement of Catholics in the anniversary presents a challenge for both sides, and calls for a fresh approach to our Reformation legacy. “From Conflict to Communion” is the aptly titled document issued in 2013 by the official Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, outlining a common approach to the forthcoming anniversary of Luther. There are, traditionally, strongly partisan interpretations of the movement Luther started. For Catholics, “Reformation” means “division”, whereas for Protestants it means “rediscovery of the Scriptures”. Both points of view need to be taken seriously by each side.

It was Pope St John Paul II who spoke of an “exchange of gifts” as the fruit of ecumenical dialogue, and Pope Francis has identified the rediscovery of Scripture in the life of the Church as one of the gifts received from our Protestant colleagues. In an atmosphere where caricatures have been demolished and neuralgic terms revisited, the Catholic bishops of Germany have felt able to acknowledge some element of celebration to these events: not in any sense of the division of Christendom and rejection of the Catholic Church, but recognising in Martin Luther a “Gospel witness and teacher of the faith”.

For their part, Lutherans, according to the official prayer for commemoration of the Reformation, have agreed that in recalling “the events that led to the foundation of their churches, [they] do not wish to do so without their Catholic fellow Christians”.

Yet we would be wrong to ignore the disunity of past centuries, and our relations can only be honest if we acknowledge the pain and hurt that we have caused each other. Rightly, Pope Francis and his Lutheran hosts in Sweden will express repentance for the divisions and hostilities caused by the Reformation and reaction to it.

But as Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has pointed out, such collaboration can only be successful if it is grounded in a deeper relationship, one that places Christ firmly at the centre of our lives as Christians.

Modern ecumenism understands that it is when we are closest to Christ that we are closest to each other, so this anniversary is a call to Catholics and Lutherans alike to be more attentive to the Gospel. In this way the anniversary can be a stepping stone to future unity, rather than a rehearsing of past hurts. Another aspect of the service that Pope Francis will attend in Sweden will be thanksgiving for 50 years of ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics.

There is no doubt that this anniversary presents a challenge to Catholics. Catholics cannot celebrate the Reformation, but our commemoration can be more than a bland acknowledgment of a historical anniversary. In the larger horizon of life in Christ and the unity for which he prayed, we may recognise – and even give thanks for – the contribution and witness of Martin Luther.

This article first appeared in the October 28 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

Source

Protestant Reformation Continues 500 Years Later

ROME – THANKS TO ADVENTISTS, A CITY SQUARE NAMED AFTER MARTIN LUTHER

Inter-European Division | Seventh-day Adventist ChurchMenu

News

Colle Oppio, Rome

A HISTORICAL DECISION IS MADE AT THE CAPITAL OF ITALY, WHICH IS HOME TO THE VATICAN CITY, AFTER CENTURIES OF HOSTILITY BETWEEN CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS

September 02, 2015 | Rome, Italy. | Notizie Avventiste, D. Bognandi, A. Mazza, CD EUDNEWS.

Rome will soon have a square named after "Martin Luther – the German theologian (1483-1546)". A historical decision is made at the capital of Italy, which is home to the Vatican City, after centuries of hostility between Catholics and Protestants, starting with the publication of his famous 95 Theses, on October 31, 1517 on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg. With the passing of time, the hostility between modern Christians changed into intense dialogue also in Rome, however on March 13, 2015 in a very friendly manner, came the final resolution by the Capitoline Executive Council and allocated a significant location in the city to the German Augustinian Monk.

The decision comes six years after the first petition was sent to the mayor of the municipality of Rome by the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Lutheran Church. In 2009, independently and without having consulted each other, they both presented a petition to name a street after Martin Luther. The request was assessed by the Commission for the Determination of Place Names, and on June 7, 2010, took a favourable stand.

Also in 2010, the Conference of Evangelical Churches in Rome was organized including the Waldensians, Methodists, Adventists, Lutherans, Baptists and the Health-conscious. To remember the Augustinian Monk's visit to Rome, which was particularly important in his journey of faith, the State Council, with the support of the director Paolo Masini, organized a day of study on Martin Luther in the Protomoteca Hall at the City of Rome. Participants included some high school classes and a large audience.

On that occasion, the Council, taking the request made a few years earlier by the two churches, sent a reminder to the mayor so that the Commission for the Determination of Place Names could make the decision. At the same time a close study of the files was initiated by the Council by appointing some members for the task: Annemarie Dupré, Consultation Coordinator, Dora Bognandi, Deputy Coordinator, Jens-Martin Kruse, Treasurer and Carlo Giliberti, member of the Council. On several occasions the Commission urged the leaders of the City to follow through with the petition which has become the common cause of the evangelical world.

In 2014, during the 100-year celebrations of the Waldensian Church in Rome, the new mayor, Ignazio Marino, immediately welcomed the request and openly promised that it would soon be settled. There has been a certain excitement due to the area to be chosen and dedicated to German Monk: a place should be chosen close to the centre, to recognize the important role he has played historically, somehow introducing Europe to modern times and giving a crucial contribution spiritually and culturally.

The site was identified in the central District of Monti, Municipality 1, Colle Oppio, near the Colosseum, along the Fortunato Mizzi Avenue. It is a lovely square with a central fountain where evangelicals will feel at home when visiting or even organizing public witnessing.

This Roman initiative is worthy of being duplicated in many other Italian cities looking forward to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation that will be remembered in just two years, in 2017. To accomplish this, cooperation and participation is encouraged among all the Evangelical communities who acknowledge the Reformation.

The inauguration, which will be also attended by representatives of the italian government, will be on September 16, 2015. Our News Editor, Andreas Mazza, will publish an exhaustive report on the event.

• Source: Seventh-day Adventist Church Inter-European Division

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